About PDF files

PaperPort can support up to three different types of PDF (Portable Document Format) files, depending upon your version of PaperPort software. The three types, often referred to as “flavors”, are:

PDF Image

PDF Searchable Image

PDF Formatted Text & Graphics(PDF Normal)

PDF Image and PDF Searchable Image files are commonly created by scanning items or by converting other types of image files to those PDF formats. PDF image files are fully searchable in PaperPort but not in other programs.

PDF Image

A PDF Image file contains a bitmapped image of a document or graphic. This popular format is useful when file size and content searching is not a concern and you need an exact replica of a document to share with others.

For example, you may want to scan documents to the PDF Image format so that you can easily distribute them to business colleagues on the network.

As with PaperPort Image (.max) files, you can use PaperPort’s image editing buttons to enhance PDF Image files, as well as add notes and annotations. You can also index and search for text in PDF Image files in PaperPort. PaperPort automatically runs its built-in OCR program on the PDF Image file to extract text for PaperPort’s All-in-One Search index.

In PaperPort Professional the PDF- MRC format is also available for saving PDF Image files with greater compression.

PDF Searchable Image

APDF Searchable Imagefilecontains a bitmapped image of a documentor graphic withtextual content stored as hidden text. It is an export format most useful for archiving legal and other content-critical documents.

Although the file size is typically larger than PDF Formatted Text & Graphics, these features make it the most useful format for archiving important documents.

The PDF Searchable Image and PDF-MRC Searchable Image formats are available in PaperPort Professional only when you have Nuance OmniPage installed on your PC.

PDF Searchable Image files can be indexed and searched outside of PaperPort by programs and systems that support full-content searches.

PDF Formatted Text & Graphics (PDF Normal)

This flavor of PDF provides a crisp, high quality PDF file with fully searchable content by storing text as characters, rather than image.

Because text is stored as characters, a file in this format is considered to be atext item, and as such, can be edited in programs such as Nuance PDF Professional, Nuance PDF Viewer Plus or Adobe Acrobat.

If you have PaperPort Professional, you can convert text-based documents, such as Word files, to this PDF format with PDF Create 5. This provides a Create Assistant, and additionally a PDF printer driver called ScanSoft PDF Create! that can be chosen in the Print dialog box of any print-capable application on your system. Nuance PDF Create can be started from many locations, as described in About creating PDF files.

This format is the best for on-screen viewing and posting to web sites. The file size is typically smaller than PDF Searchable Image, and the file content is externally searchable by programs and systems that support full-content searches.

Notes:

You can use PaperPort’s image editing buttons to enhance PDF Image files and the editing tools in PDF Viewer Plus on other PDF flavors.

The file type icon is used to indicate that you can image-edit a PDF file in the Image View window, or in a PDF program from Nuance. They also allow image-only PDF files to be transformed into Searchable PDF.

The file type icon (or the icon currently associated with the program you use to open PDF files) indicates that the PDF file is editable outside of PaperPort. PDF Formatted Text & Graphics files (PDF Normal), and other PDF files that PaperPort recognizes as text items rather than image items, can be edited in programs that support this format. This includes the supplied Nuance PDF Viewer Plus and PDF Converter Professional.